Covid-19 has eliminated in-person conferences for the foreseeable future, and this has forced the conference industry to “go virtual”. In addition to virtual-conferences, we’re also seeing an increased quantity of webinars and podcasts.
Whilst there are obvious advantages to the in-person events, there can also be a different set of advantages to the virtual events, if they are done thoughtfully and well.
Virtual-events are a relatively new phenomenon, so the industry is still early in its learning curve. I’m noticing that as time goes on, the conferences are getting more successful. It’s as if there is a collective learning process happening within the industry.
Last month, my company Datagate (telecom billing for MSPs) was a sponsor/exhibitor at OITVoIP‘s Cloud Connections Summit 2020 (#CCS2020)
What impressed me about #CCS2020 was the impressive line-up of very interesting and relevant speakers, over and above the sponsors, including myself, who also got to present. My team and I attended many of the presentations because they had such good material.
OITVoIP’s President, Ray Orsini did a great job as host, and Sean Lardo (OITVoIP’s VP of Channel Development) was also great as co-host and counterfoil to Ray, with constant amusing banter between the two of them.
It was noticeable that the audience tended to move around together to attend whatever was the current presentation, rather than wander around the virtual conference center on their own, visiting booths etc. I think Ray picked up on this early on, and ensured that the group not only attended the presentations, but also visited the sponsor booths. This was done, for example, by organizing and announcing a demonstration at the Datagate booth at a preset time, that was complementary to the event’s main schedule. It worked well.
As an attendee of the virtual conference, it played out much like a big television show, where you had the ability to self navigate through the virtual conference center, between or during presentations. I could see it was important that they had gaps in the schedule, similar to ad breaks in a television show, so that attendees have the ability to do what they need to do from time to time throughout the day (after all, they are all really sitting at a computer screen at home, so plenty of potential distractions).
At the end of the conference, Datagate came away with a list of contacts who expressed interest in our telecom billing solution and a good level of promotion and exposure to our target market – MSPs who sell VoIP. Maybe not the same level of personal interaction we would have had at an in-person conference, but still a good level of promotion, considering we didn’t have to fly across the country to get there!
Another virtual event that worked well for Datagate in early July, was a webinar we held in partnership with ConnectBooster (the automated payment collection portal). Datagate and ConnectBooster are complementary products, both aimed at MSPs, so holding a joint event meant that we both benefited from each other’s community. We had around 80 attendees, which resulted in some good sales activity afterwards.
President ConnectBooster
The webinar featured presentations from Datagate and ConnectBooster, including ConectBooster’s president Ryan Goodman and me.
A video recording of the Datagate-ConnectBooster webinar is available online, here.
A short while later, Ryan and I recorded a podcast interview that will be released on ConnectBooster’s web site soon.
Early next month, Datagate will be a sponsor-exhibitor at Channel Partners Virtual 2020. If you’d like to join us, click here for a free or discounted pass.
With all this activity… I sometimes have to remind myself that, well – it’s all virtual. We haven’t actually gone anywhere to do this…
Mark Loveys 
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